Unsecured Boulder Causes Horrific Accident

It fell from dump truck, killed 2 women
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 13, 2018 2:03 AM CDT
Unsecured Boulder Falls From Truck, Kills 2 Women
Police traced the driver from this photo of the vehicle.   (Rosemount Police)

Two women in Minnesota are dead and a contractor is facing two counts of vehicular homicide after a horrific accident, police say. Karen Christiansen, 67, and daughter Jena Christiansen, 32, were killed Monday when an unsecured 800-pound boulder tumbled from a southbound dump truck and smashed into their northbound Toyota Avalon, the Pioneer Press reports. Police say the boulder came off the truck as it went over a railroad crossing in Rosemount, south of St. Paul. Driver Joseph Paul Czeck, who did not stop at the scene of the accident, was arrested Wednesday after what Rosemount Police Chief Mitchell Scott calls "good old-fashioned police work."

Scott says a camera captured the truck driving from the accident scene, but the license number and the company's name weren't visible. Officers spoke to people at several construction sites and found that Czeck, owner of a landscaping company, had driven from one with a load of boulders Monday. The medical examiner's office says both women died at the scene from blunt force head trauma. Scott says the deaths could have been prevented if the law had been followed. "You're required by law to have whatever you are hauling secured in your vehicle," he says, per WCCO. "So if you have a lawn mower or an ATV, UTV inside, you are responsible to make sure it’s secure." (More Minnesota stories.)

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